Wal-Mart Earnings Miss; Weak Outlook
February 20th, 2014Ahh, the recovery seems to be continuing apace…
Via: AP:
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. offered a weak profit outlook, signaling that it expects economic pressures to keep weighing on its low-income shoppers around the world.
The world’s largest retailer also said Thursday that its fourth-quarter profit, which covers the crucial holiday season, dropped 21 percent. Its Wal-Mart stores recorded their fourth consecutive quarter of declines in revenue at stores open at least a year.
NSA Will Expand Surveillance—Because of Lawsuits
February 20th, 2014
Via: The Hill:
The federal government may actually expand the controversial surveillance program that collects Americans’ phone records in a bid to preserve evidence for the multiple lawsuits filed against the National Security Agency, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The decision comes despite President Obama’s instruction in a speech on American surveillance practices last month that government officials find a way to end the data collection program.
Obama tasked Attorney General Eric Holder and members of the intelligence community with finding a way to wind down the government program without eroding the government’s intelligence capabilities.
But, according to the Journal, government lawyers are worried that if they shut down the program, they could violate evidence preservation rules requiring them to maintain the databases amid ongoing litigation.
Civil liberties groups like the ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation have filed lawsuits charging the surveillance program is unconstitutional. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has also led a class-action suit against the government program.
In fact, concerns over the legal challenges could even effectively expand the phone record database. At present, the government only maintains five years of call data, purging older information at least twice per year. But the government may now opt to maintain that older data in the interest of preserving evidence.
Paxil May Promote Breast Cancer
February 20th, 2014Via: Los Angeles Times:
A team of researchers from the City of Hope in Duarte has developed a speedy way to identify drugs and chemicals that can disrupt the balance of sex hormones in human beings and influence the development and progress of diseases such as breast cancer.
In a trial screening of 446 drugs in wide circulation, the new assay singled out the popular antidepressant paroxetine (better known by its commercial name, Paxil) as having a weak estrogenic effect that could promote the development and growth of breast tumors in women.
This is important because as many as a quarter of women being treated for breast cancer suffer from depression — a condition most commonly treated with antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), including Paxil, which has been on the market since 1992. Almost a quarter of American women in their 40s and 50s are taking an antidepressant, mostly SSRIs.
Chief of the Korea Division of the National Security Agency Charged with Murder of Adopted Son
February 19th, 2014The person who heads the “Korea Division” of the NSA is only thirty six years old?
Via: NBC:
A Maryland man has been charged with the murder of his adopted 3-year-old son, Montgomery County police said Tuesday.
Brian Patrick O’Callaghan, 36, of Damascus has been charged with first degree murder and child abuse.
In court, O’Callaghan’s lawyer said the suspect worked for the National Security Agency as chief of its Korea division; the boy had been adopted from Korea in October.
Police say O’Callaghan told investigators he was caring for 3-year-old Hyunsu for two days while his mother was away, adding he hadn’t bonded much with his new son. O’Callaghan said he helped give Hyunsu a shower Jan. 31, during which he said the 3-year-old had slipped in the bathtub, falling backward and hitting his shoulder.
O’Callaghan told police the next afternoon, Hyunsu was unresponsive following a nap and had mucus coming from his nose. O’Callaghan said he took Hyusnu to a Germantown emergency room several hours later, where he was deemed to be in critical condition, possibly brain dead.
Hyunsu was pronounced dead two days later. Investigators say he had impact trauma on his body, as well as internal bleeding.
O’Callaghan was arrested Feb. 16 and is being held without bond.
At his hearing Tuesday, O’Callaghan’s attorney also said O’Callaghan was a Marine veteran who had been involved in the rescue of Army POW Jessica Lynch. O’Callaghan served in the Marine Corps from 1997 through 2004 as sergeant.
According to his service record, O’Callaghan was deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom for nine months in 2003 and served in Al-Wasit Province, An Nasiriyah and Al Kut. During the An Nasiriyah deployment, O’Callaghan worked with the Civil Affairs Group — he was tasked with keeping civilians away from battle.
Research Credit: P7y845W4
Ukraine: 25 Dead in Protests
February 19th, 2014Via: CNN:
They’ve given up their ground before — voluntarily, as a political concession. But that seems to be over.
After the deaths of 25 people in clashes a day earlier, Ukrainian protesters are prepared to stand and fight again Wednesday.
Police want to clear them out of central Kiev. Some of them died trying to stay put Tuesday — using projectiles and burning barricades to keep security forces at bay at Kiev’s Maidan, or Independence Square.
It was the deadliest day in the months-long standoff between the government and opposition leaders.
Thousands of demonstrators have packed Independence Square since November, when President Viktor Yanukovych reversed a decision to sign a trade deal with the European Union and instead turned toward Russia.
The unrest intensified after an anti-protest law went into effect. Throngs of demonstrators took to the streets to protest the law.
Police and protesters were among Tuesday’s dead. A journalist and a government employee died, too.
More than 240 others were hospitalized, Ukraine’s health ministry said.
Half of U.S. Prison Sex Crimes Involve Staff Toward Inmates
February 19th, 2014Even as I read the first sentence, I thought, “This number is probably off by an order of magnitude.”
Well, keep reading down the article…
Via: Reuters:
Nearly 9,000 incidents of sexual victimization against inmates in U.S. prisons and jails were reported in 2011, with roughly half of them involving corrections staff, according to a report by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.
…
About half of all the allegations involved staff directed toward inmates, it said, and half involved inmates with other inmates.
Another study released in May by the bureau showed some 80,000 victim allegations among inmates, said Allan Beck, a BJS statistician and an author of the report.
“Of course we find much higher rates of sexual victimization through inmates’ self-reports than what comes through in the official records,” he said.
Research Credit: P7y845W4
Capital One Says It Can Show Up At Cardholders’ Homes, Workplaces
February 18th, 2014Yeah, well, maybe people should call Capital One and cancel their accounts.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Ding-dong, Cap One calling.
Credit card issuer Capital One isn’t shy about getting into customers’ faces. The company recently sent a contract update to cardholders that makes clear it can drop by any time it pleases.
The update specifies that “we may contact you in any manner we choose” and that such contacts can include calls, emails, texts, faxes or a “personal visit.”
As if that weren’t creepy enough, Cap One says these visits can be “at your home and at your place of employment.”
…
Incredibly, Cap One’s aggressiveness doesn’t stop with personal visits. The company’s contract update also includes this little road apple:
“We may modify or suppress caller ID and similar services and identify ourselves on these services in any manner we choose.”
Now that’s just freaky. Cap One is saying it can trick you into picking up the phone by using what looks like a local number or masquerading as something it’s not, such as Save the Puppies or a similarly friendly-seeming bogus organization.
This is known as spoofing, and it’s perfectly legal. As I’ve written before, the federal Truth in Caller ID Act makes it a crime to use a phony number or caller ID message to commit fraud or cause harm to others.
But it’s not against the law to engage in what courts have called “non-harmful spoofing,” which includes businesses wearing digital disguises to penetrate a consumer’s phone defenses.
Research Credit: bretwalda
Plutocrats in Drag Joke About Financial Crisis at Private Party
February 18th, 2014Via: New York Magazine:
“Good evening, Exalted High Council, former Grand Swipes, Grand Swipes-in-waiting, fellow Wall Street Kappas, Kappas from the Spring Street and Montgomery Street chapters, and worthless neophytes!”
It was January 2012, and Ross, wearing a tuxedo and purple velvet moccasins embroidered with the fraternity’s Greek letters, was standing at the dais of the St. Regis Hotel ballroom, welcoming a crowd of two hundred wealthy and famous Wall Street figures to the Kappa Beta Phi dinner. Ross, the leader (or “Grand Swipe”) of the fraternity, was preparing to invite 21 new members — “neophytes,” as the group called them — to join its exclusive ranks.
Looking up at him from an elegant dinner of rack of lamb and foie gras were many of the most famous investors in the world, including executives from nearly every too-big-to-fail bank, private equity megafirm, and major hedge fund. AIG CEO Bob Benmosche was there, as were Wall Street superlawyer Marty Lipton and Alan “Ace” Greenberg, the former chairman of Bear Stearns. And those were just the returning members. Among the neophytes were hedge fund billionaire and major Obama donor Marc Lasry and Joe Reece, a high-ranking dealmaker at Credit Suisse. … All told, enough wealth and power was concentrated in the St. Regis that night that if you had dropped a bomb on the roof, global finance as we know it might have ceased to exist.
‘Star Wars’ at Sea: Navy Ready to Deploy Laser System This Summer
February 17th, 2014Via: AP:
Some of the Navy’s futuristic weapons sound like something out of “Star Wars,” with lasers designed to shoot down aerial drones and electric guns that fire projectiles at hypersonic speeds.
That future is now.
The Navy plans to deploy its first laser on a ship later this year, and it intends to test an electromagnetic rail gun prototype aboard a vessel within two years.
For the Navy, it’s not so much about the whiz-bang technology as it is about the economics of such armaments. Both costs pennies on the dollar compared with missiles and smart bombs, and the weapons can be fired continuously, unlike missiles and bombs, which eventually run out.
“It fundamentally changes the way we fight,” said Capt. Mike Ziv, program manager for directed energy and electric weapon systems for the Naval Sea Systems Command.
The Navy’s laser technology has evolved to the point that a prototype to be deployed aboard the USS Ponce this summer can be operated by a single sailor, he said.
The solid-state Laser Weapon System is designed to target what the Navy describes as “asymmetrical threats.” Those include aerial drones, speed boats and swarm boats, all potential threats to warships in the Persian Gulf, where the Ponce, a floating staging base, is set to be deployed.
Washington: ‘Bizarre’ Cluster of Severe Birth Defects Haunts Health Experts
February 17th, 2014Via: NBC:
A mysterious cluster of severe birth defects in rural Washington state is confounding health experts, who say they can find no cause, even as reports of new cases continue to climb.
Federal and state officials won’t say how many women in a three-county area near Yakima, Wash., have had babies with anencephaly, a heart-breaking condition in which they’re born missing parts of the brain or skull. And they admit they haven’t interviewed any of the women in question, or told the mothers there’s a potentially widespread problem.
